Secondary Service as Action Fair

To help secondary students decide how best to volunteer their time, the secondary service learning team (Liam Moody, Jeroen Lamme and Nick Bolhuis) organised the first secondary Service as Action and Creativity, Activity and Service Fair. ‘Mr Louis and Mr Jorrit are now hiring.’

By Ingrid Schmoutziguer, communications

All secondary students in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (MYP), or Diploma Programme (DP) need to dedicate their time and talents in Service as Action (SAA) or Creativity, Action and Service (CAS) projects. What is Service as Action? Action is learning by doing and experiencing. Service is part of action and it is where IB learners strive to be caring members of the local and global community, by demonstrating personal commitment to services that make a difference to the lives of others and the environment.

Colour Run

Wilma (grade 12) is enthusiastically signing up students and staff to participate in ‘ISU’s 1st Charity Colour Run’. ‘I am going to use the colour powder the Indian community uses to celebrate Holi ‘, Wilma explains. ‘Participants pay 5 euros and apart from a small amount used to buy the colour powder, all the money goes to Unicef.’ The colour run is a 5 kilometer run around the school and will take place on Thursday 18 October.

Students in grade 6 start with Service As Action projects guided by their classroom mentor and the service learning team. By the time a student gets to the Diploma Programme, they should be able to design their own CAS projects and execute them independently. To help students choose where to devote their time, the service learning fair, offered a wide range of projects the students could support.

Safe Space

Mother Tongue coordinator Sara d’Orazio offered students a variety of ideas on how to support mother tongue within the ISUtrecht community. ‘Students can become a mother tongue buddy for younger students both in class and outside of the classroom, or organise a mini-event to show the rest of the school how great their language is’, says Sara. ‘But they could also offer to be a ‘safe space’ in their language, offering students the opportunity to talk about problems, fears, dreams or exciting developments in their mother tongue.’.

A group of grade …. students, is thinking about a clothing drive catwalk with which they hope to raise money for charity whilst at the same time, making people aware that their discarded clothes could be of great use to someone else. Another group of tech savvy students from grades 7-11, offer to help out their fellow students who experience computer troubles. ‘Within our group we have enough knowledge to tackle most software and hardware issues’, says Angelo (grade 7).

Event Helpers

Across the playground, Mr Jorrit, one of the concierges is doing a stellar job, drawing students to his stall adorned with posters stating: ‘We’re hiring’. ‘Putting chairs out, lifting tables, helping out with the sound system, or serve tea and coffee to guests; there is always loads to do when we have a parent event’, says Jorrit. ‘Fortunately we already have quite a few names on our list.’